What is a UX portfolio, and What Should it Contain?

BY ANDREAS KOMNINOS

A big part of a UX Designer’s career is spent communicating his/her findings to other members in a UX team. But to make a career in UX design, one type of communication you will have to master is the ability to showcase your design skills to the people who are likely to hire you. To achieve this, UX designers develop portfolios – i.e., a collection of case studies highlighting past work they’ve done and how this work demonstrates the skills they have developed. Let’s find out what the key ingredients are in a great portfolio.

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/what-is-a-ux-portfolio-and-what-should-it-contain?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=sm

Story Matrix

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13U5sm9TpmLPaa_km-SQG0C2T4-nuEpsTQLuZ0gUHmJE/edit?usp=sharing

Presentation 08 – Understanding Wireframes

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1PBo_b2ywVDulSrvSfm4n9yKnkI9YFcHhLLY5k4jfoyA/edit?usp=sharing

Presentation 07 – Understanding UI Design

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1bQXo0yif3NeYYAagTFas-coVDTV2S4Qf-JQdCC3W-tQ/edit?usp=sharing

Presentation 06 – UI:The Basic Principles of Design

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1q8BUDXREMLli5V4zgNb3dnWKEyc1KMwiRHUJlPZ0MPY/edit?usp=sharing

Line25

http://line25.com/articles/inspirational-showcase-of-uiux-design-presentations

7 common mistakes in UX portfolios

Here’s what not to do when creating a UX portfolio.

Design managers want to like your portfolio. They want to be impressed by your work, your process, your skills. But they can’t do this unless you let them.
After consulting with CEOs, chief product officers, and UX designers, we’ve compiled the following list of what not to do. Here are seven mistakes to avoid the next time you’re brushing up your UX portfolio.

http://www.creativebloq.com/netmag/7-common-mistakes-ux-portfolios-111517629

Understanding Scenarios

A scenario is a “day in the life of” one of your personas. It should include both the persona’s daily working tasks as well as how your app or website fits into their lives.

Writing a scenario is as simple as taking your research and extrapolating from it to document the tasks that your persona’s perform when using your product.

A step by step guide to scenario mapping

http://www.uxforthemasses.com/scenario-mapping/

Using Scenarios

https://uxthink.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/using_scenarios/

Usability.gov—Scenarios

http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/scenarios.html

UIAccess.com—Example Scenarios

http://www.uiaccess.com/accessucd/scenarios_eg.html

Personas

The persona method has developed from being a method for IT system development to being used in many other contexts, including development of products, marketing, planning of communication, and service design. Despite the fact that the method has existed since the late 1990s, there is still no clear definition of what the method encompasses. Common understanding is that the persona is a description of a fictitious person, but whether this description is based on assumptions or data is not clear, and opinions also differ on what the persona description should cover.

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/book/the-encyclopedia-of-human-computer-interaction-2nd-ed/personas#toc_5_2?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=sm&utm_content=user_personas_in_stories_scenarios&utm_campaign=post

Understanding Personas

A persona is a fictitious identity used to represent one of the user groups for who you are designing. They are created by taking both qualitative and quantitative data from; analytics, surveys, interviews user testing and other research techniques that the UX designer uses to craft a sketch of an ideal user.
A good persona needs a name, photo, realistic and research based motivations and goals, and a backstory rooted in reality.

Usability.gov—Personas

http://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/personas.html

Building data based personas

http://www.sitepoint.com/create-data-backed-personas/

How To Create UX Personas (video)

http://uxmastery.com/create-ux-personas/

An Introduction to user personas—UX Lady

http://www.ux-lady.com/introduction-to-user-personas/

UIACCESS.COM—Example Personas

http://www.uiaccess.com/accessucd/personas_eg.html

Free Persona Template

http://fakecrow.com/free-persona-template/